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June 26, 2009

Tortured Logic: Strange Pursuit of Another Torture-Memo Lawyer

The National Lawyers Guild San Francisco Bay Area Chapter delivered more than 100 complaints to the State Bar on Friday, demanding disciplinary action against former Department of Defense General Counsel William Haynes — now GC at San Ramon-based Chevron Corp. — for “championing policies of torture” at Guantanamo Bay.

But no matter how persuasive the legal group’s arguments may be, Haynes won’t be disbarred. He can’t be. Haynes is not a member of California’s State Bar.

Details, schmetails, after the jump.

Haynes is actually a registered in-house counsel, a relatively newly created class of lawyers who are members of other states’ bars but are not licensed to practice by the state of California. They are subject to discipline by California’s Bar, but Bar representatives on Friday said that such proceedings are extremely rare.

That technicality isn’t stopping the SF chapter of the Lawyers Guild, which is generating petitions from “ordinary Americans” against Haynes by providing Bar complaint forms on its Web site.

“There’s some value to demonstrating the effect this had had on the public,” NLGSF executive director Carlos Villarreal said Friday. Villarreal conceded that Haynes can’t be disbarred in California but suggested that revoking his counsel registration might work as an alternative.

The NLGSF contends that Haynes authored a DoD memo that OK’d the use of harsh interrogation techniques on detainees at Guantanamo Bay without noting potential legal concerns about such activities. When that memo was rescinded, guild members allege, Haynes championed similar interrogation-authorizing work by Justice Department attorney John Yoo.

The Bar declined to act on a similar complaint filed by the NLGSF in March. Now the guild is asking the Bar to review that decision, and Villarreal said his organization is submitting more details gleaned from Senate hearings on interrogation methods to bolster its arguments against Haynes. The guild may even petition the state Supreme Court if the Bar doesn’t act, Villarreal said.

Haynes’ attorney did not return a phone message left with his office Friday afternoon.

The guild may face one more hurdle in its crusade against Haynes. The Bar’s rule of limitations says complaints must be filed within five years of the alleged lawyer wrongdoing, though it does include a number of exceptions. Most of Haynes’ work on so-called torture documents appears to have occurred in 2002 and 2003.

Villarreal said he didn’t immediately know whether the time-limitation rule would affect the guild’s complaint.

Comments

Ahh, the witch hunt continues. It is not enough for Obama to have won, the far-left now feels it must go and persecute those who disagree with them. There is no substance to this complaint; anyone who has actually read the memos knows that the lawyers were sincerely grappling with difficult legal issues. But that doesn't fit the NLG narrative -- they want to paint those who disagree with them as evil. So they are trying to criminalize holding different political opinions. Even if they don't succeed, their clear goal is to intimidate people in the future. Why the electoral process is not sufficient for them is unclear; unfortunately, this sort of intolerance is all too prevelant on the left.

This article seems like a weak attempt to smear our chapter. Implying that we were not aware or were ill informed about Haynes' status with the state bar, but then acknowledging that we were aware. Haynes works for Chevron as an attorney because the California State Bar has granted him that privilege through its special status of in-house-counsel - a status that requires attorneys to follow all the same ethical rules as any other California attorney. So revoking that status would obviously have a significant effect on his career and hopefully serve as a significant deterrent to future torture advocates. We are also working with our counterparts in D.C., where Haynes is a fully-registered member, to file another complaint.

As for the comment from SFBurke: Read the Senate Armed Services Report that came out in April and it will be obvious that Haynes and other attorneys weren't "grappling with difficult legal issues," they were straining to create legal cover for acts that were already ongoing and that the leadership wanted to continue and expand - producing opinions that ignored international and domestic law as well as basic moral decency - and opinions that were all later rescinded while still under Republican leadership. We absolutely want to intimidate people from doing this in the future - its called deterrence and it is part of why the criminal justice system and the state bar ethics complaint system exist.